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Pop Culturein Hamilton

This bookis an
unauthorized analysis and commentary on Orphan Black and its
associated products.None of the individuals or companies
associated with the television show, comics, or any merchandise based
on this series has in any way sponsored, approved, endorsed, or
authorized this book.

Introduction

One
can watch the five-season epic of Orphan Black as a single
heroine questing towards enlightenment, with different aspects of the
same woman representing the inner voices of rationality, rebellion,
ferocity, cold anger, and propriety. Smaller, quieter voices offer
Beth’s paranoia, Tony’s snarky defiance, M.K.’s terror, and
Krystal’s lightness. Of course, Sarah is the willpower, the
directed self. Her brother Felix calls her “the glue that’s
holding us all together” in “The Antisocialism of Sex” (407).

As a
heroine’s journey text, Orphan Black is fascinating. Rarely
in fiction do five women all quest (with a few more like Beth,
Krystal, and Veera going on abortive, simplified journeys). Arguably
each has nearly a fair share of the story arc, casting them all as
the story’s central heroes. Far from static sidekicks, all grow and
change. Moreover, their journeys often reflect, as Sarah and Helena
each must accept the other in season one and return together from the
symbolic underworld in season five. The heroines are not only
questing for freedom, but for unity, binding together ever tighter in
their Clone Club.

The
heroine’s journey, like the hero’s journey popularized by Joseph
Campbell, involves the central character metaphorically growing from
child to adult by journeying into the underworld and facing dark
forces that represent the tyrannical father and/or murderous mother –
both inversions of the potential good parents the hero might become,
after he or she has learned from these voices of the dark side. In
fact, the shadow, as Jung calls the dark side of the self, is all the
undesirable impulses one has repressed – greed, cruelty, anger.
This side of the self reveals
qualities the hero can see in other people but not in himself –
“such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal
fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate
love of money and possessions – in short all the little sins about
which he might have previously” ignored in himself, explains
Jungian analyst Marie Louise Von Franz (Individuation 174).

Still,
the shadow side offers a surprising strength. Most often the
fictional questor is the sweet, inexperienced adolescent – Dorothy
Gale or Harry Potter – discovering the rage and power of the evil
tyrant. However, other questors discover other lost parts of the self
– the innocent they’ve long left behind or the sexual woman
they’ve always repressed. Thus, the women of the series all undergo
this journey as the story focuses on their meeting these lost shadow
twins as much as it does on their struggle for autonomy.

The
shadow need not be evil but simply polarized, as professional Beth
and heedless Sarah have chosen contrasting paths. In fact, all of the
clones are opposites, representing the different sides of the
personality. Each time Sarah masquerades as Beth, she tries on her
personality and borrows abilities she’s never discovered in
herself. As all the clones use this power, and also tangle with
wicked matriarchs and patriarchs, they discover their own potential.
The hero’s journey is about facing one’s shadow – all one could
have become but chose not to – and discovering one’s hidden
abilities. “A woman’s psychological development requires
integration of many facets of her self in order for her to become a
whole and healthy human being. When a woman is limited to only one or
two roles, she can feel or act mad because the unactualized parts of
herself are struggling to express themselves,” explains Linda
Schierse Leonard in Meeting the Madwoman: Empowering the
Feminine Spirit (4). This is the struggle all people face,
embodied so directly through the many faces of Tatiana
Maslany, the actress who plays them all.

This
moment of learning proves true for the actress as well. “There’s
a large part of me in each of them. And a large part of myself is
revealed in each of these characters,” she says (“Send in the
Clones”). Through the series, the women all take each other’s
places, walking a mile in each other’s shoes and discovering what
it would be like to be so different. Maslany says of switching,
“They’re playing, they’re struggling, they’re trying
something on – they’re not embodying themselves, they’re
putting on an act and they feel exposed and they feel that they’re
screwing up and like they’re going to be caught out and they’re
going to be seen as a fraud and that’s everything I feel when I’m
doing those scenes. And it is technically so confusing, but that’s
what is so fun about those scenes” (Berstein 93).

Sarah,
questing for her child as the epic heroine often does, learns love
from Helena, domesticity from Alison, discipline from Beth. Cosima,
who’s dying from the illness they share, impresses responsibility
on her. However, Sarah can only defeat the brutal corporations by
playing Rachel, the dark insider clone who knows all their secrets
and is willing to play dirty. Rachel, by contrast, spends five
seasons setting herself above her sisters and ignoring their pleas to
protect and join them. She does not step into their shoes, but by
observing their love, finally chooses their side. In the same way,
Sarah’s accepting Helena helps the madwoman emerge from religious
conditioning. After, Helena becomes pregnant and quests to be a
mother, but first she must defeat the shadow figure Virginia Coady,
murderer of her own children, to absorb her terrible strength. At the
same time, Alison grows from a place of denial and repression to a
free spirit, finally comfortable with who she is. While Cosima is the
best adjusted, contrasting lover-inspiratrices Delphine and Shay
guide her down different paths before she faces her creators and
decides who to become. This book explores all their classic heroine’s
journeys – hearing a call to heroism, working with comforting
friends and enlightening lovers, borrowing the powers of their
sisters, and finally defying the tyrants to claim freedom.

Sarah

Threshold

I
will start with the thread of my sestra Sarah, who stepped off a
train one day and met herself.

Sarah
Manning has the most traditional pattern, beginning as “a poor
little orphaned foster wretch” as Felix calls her in episode one,
who’s completely unaware of her magical birth and glorious destiny.
The show’s creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson saw her as the
central figure from the start. Manson says of Sarah, “We always
knew that she was the outside, the black sheep, that she would be the
one who’s different from the others somehow” (Berstein 35).

This
is the story of the superheroine, the epic young woman born with a
magical power others lack (in this case an unusual fertility that
will ultimately save them all from death). She’s Harry Potter, who
not only was born a wizard but destroyed the Dark Lord at age two and
remains marked with divine powers, signaling his ability to fight
evil. Sarah’s power is internal – the ability to bear children
even despite her creators’ deadly curse, and the power to defy the
illness killing her sisters.

Most
fairytale children grow up with evil stepfamilies or foster-parents
bewildered by their adolescent desires. This will soften the wrench
of leaving home. In his signature studies, Freud notes that this is a
common children’s fantasy: After the parents somehow disappoint or
dissatisfy the child, he dreams that he is adopted, the child of
distant royalty. (Frankel, From Girl to Goddess 18)

Sarah
in fact is a magical child, with an awesome destiny from the moment
of conception. Her other superpower of course is the biology of
having a child. In “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”
(210), Cosima tells her, “You’re the wild type, Sarah. You
propagate against all odds. You know, you’re restless. You
survive.” Nature is her ally as she quests for her child.

“In
the first stage of this kind of adventure, the hero leaves the realm
of the familiar, over which he has some measure of control, and comes
to a threshold” (Campbell 146). Sarah begins the first episode
awakening on a train, symbolizing the awakening about her life that’s
coming. In fiction, “A stranger rides into town” is a classic
plot, bringing change by shaking up the dynamic. As it turns out,
she’s been gone for eight months, and now she wants her child
returned. She had Kira when she was only twenty-one, and likely felt
terribly unprepared. “The woman who gives birth when she has not
yet grown up may fall asleep from the shock and find herself in a
dream world in which she is forever a teenager, disconcerted to hear
herself called ‘Mother’,” explains fairytale scholar Joan
Gould (120). Sarah didn’t sleep but fled; however, her
disassociation is clear. Though she dreams of life with her
daughter, she has no idea who the girl is anymore. Her actress says,
“Every part of her being wants to be that mother, for Kira. But no
part of her knows how to do it” (“Send in the Clones”). She’s
not only on a quest to reclaim her child but to understand her value,
as her foster mother S. wishes she would, and to connect with them
both.

Sarah
confesses later to Felix, she wants him to steal a bag of cocaine
she’s pilfered and, as she puts it, “I’m back on the run, the
usual Sarah shite storm.” She’s left her boyfriend “Vic the
Dick” after hitting him first. On her arrival, she calls Mrs. S.,
who refuses to let her see Kira. Furious, Sarah slams the receiver
down with a muttered “bitch!” when S. hangs up on her. Clearly,
her life is a financial and relationship shambles. She’s thus
prepared for her journey to begin. Fawcett says, “She’s a
character who has made a lot of wrong choices and is now trying to
set things straight, make amends, and trying to be a better mother to
her daughter.” Manson adds, “Over the course of the first season,
I think she grows up quite a lot” (“Send in the Clones”).

As
Sarah walks away, she sees a distressed woman in a business suit. The
woman piles up her belongings, and when she turns, Sarah spies a face
that’s a copy of her own. Before they can speak, however, the other
woman jumps in front of a train.

Manson
calls Beth Childs “A tortured yet brave cop” and “the inciting
incident of the entire series” (“Send in the Clones”). “Sarah
watches Beth take a few steps to her death, and it all begins for
her. Identity is thrown open; so many questions are posed to her
narrative. The appearance of her world has shifted and will continue
to shift” (Heuslein 83). Each clone she meets who dies is like
losing a part of herself and supplies her with deeper knowledge about
mortality. Through it all, she deepens, understanding the others more
as she understands herself.

Sarah
is named for the Biblical heroine, whose biology (or God’s
blessing) was so strong that she had a child at age ninety. Her last
name suggests toughness and manning up, straddling gender conventions
to be the hero. Some of the earliest-introduced clones, Alison,
Beth, and Cosima, suggest an ABC pattern, regulating and dehumanizing
them. In this list, Sarah is the misfit, though she takes Beth’s
identity and blends in.

Beth,
a single strong, one-syllable name, seems right for a cop. It’s
short for Elizabeth, the name of powerful ruling queens (she also
shares name roots with Buffy the Vampire Slayer). As Sarah takes
Beth’s identity, she grows into this heroic archetype, learning to
be a cop and protect her loved ones. Elizabeth means “Pledged to
God,” and Sarah/Beth is the story’s Chosen One, battling forces
of evil to save her daughter. Further, by taking her identity Sarah
is subverting this – choosing to be chosen instead of letting
destiny do it. Beth’s last name, Childs, suggests an inability to
cope and yet an innocent perspective on the world – all a shadow
for the tough, suspicious Sarah “Manning.”

Traditionally,
the heroine’s journey is a call to rescue someone in danger – a
sister or lover or child. All these will come through the first
season, but for Sarah the first quest is to rescue herself – to
seize a better life by claiming Beth’s. In the process, she
discovers all the hidden potential within herself, who she could
become with different opportunities. This is the power of the
identical self who went a different way – in Jungian terms, the
shadow.

One’s
shadow is all the qualities he or she has rejected: Luke Skywalker
chooses the light side of the force, and Darth Vader the dark. Closer
yet are Harry and Voldemort, both half-wizard orphans with similar
gifts who choose opposite paths. While Voldemort chooses sycophants
and domination, Harry makes true friends and pursues the path of
love – all the while aware that different choices would have made
him “great.” He’s drawn to battle Voldemort, because when he
does, he battles the evil impulse within himself and emerges
stronger.

Jung
writes: “The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses
to acknowledge about himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon
him directly or indirectly—for instance, inferior traits of
character and other incompatible tendencies” (CW 9, pp.
285).

Taking
Beth’s ID, Sarah thinks in the comic, “A fresh start. Didn’t
appreciate it when I was a kid. But right now? Nothing in the whole
damn world sounds better” (The Clone Club#1:
Sarah). Gould notes that changing clothes in a fairytale signals
“a change of state, as if she were continually changing one skin
for another” (44). Changing faces does the same, but more
dramatically.

Archetypes
scholar Carol Pearson contrasts the Innocent and the Orphan. While
the Innocent believes people are essentially kind, and tries
desperately to be perfect and lovable, the Orphan operates from a
more traumatized and cynical place. “At some point, Orphans give up
on failed authorities and take control of their own lives, and when
they do, they become Rebels” (85). This rebel figure “works
for justice and claims solidarity with all other oppressed, wounded,
or suffering people” (Pearson 85).

Witnessing
the death of this copy of herself stuns Sarah. The moment calls on
her to take stock of her choices and priorities – leaving Kira,
ignoring the effect her walking out has had on her mother as well as
her daughter. It also provides her a literal opportunity to reinvent
herself.

This
fresh start is like a wish come true. Sarah takes the other woman’s
purse and explores her house. On finding a paradise of expensive
furniture, elegant clothes, and a fat bank account, Sarah claims this
life for herself. It’s a shadow moment, discovering who she could
have been with different choices, then trying out this lifestyle by
walking in her double’s shoes. While Sarah is an outsider, from
London, Beth is from East York, part of Toronto. To Sarah, Beth
offers the perks of wealth and education, the warmth of a loving
boyfriend, and the discipline of a cop – all things she’s never
had, which as she samples them, evoke love, responsibility, and duty
in herself. In her flat, Sarah is caught by the snapshots of the
happy couple, with her lookalike snuggled up with an amazingly
attractive man. With this, Sarah calls her, “A girl with a pretty
nice life.”

Same-sex
siblings tend to be both Shadow and ideal self for each other. As
Jungian analyst Christine Downing puts it, “She is both what I
would most aspire to be but feel I never can be and what I am
most proud not to be but fearful of becoming” (“Sisters
and Brothers” 111). All this is very true of Sarah and Beth, the
first sister pairing of the show, and will follow for the other
clones as well.

Sarah
can no longer insist she isn’t capable of this kind of growth, so,
having tried it, she continues to nurture these qualities within.
However, with them come the threat of Beth’s addiction and despair,
leading to suicide because she apparently couldn’t handle the
persecution. These too are a mantle Sarah must inherit as she battles
them. One of the central
mysteries is what caused her death. Manson says of Sarah, “She’s
investigating herself in a way, trying to find out what led to her
suicide” (“Send in the Clones”). By doing so, Sarah addresses
whether she might ever do the same.

For
the individual, one of the major tasks in the process of
psychological development is to recognize, acknowledge, and accept
those rejected aspects of the self (the shadow). The process of
integration through acknowledging and accepting the shadow aspects of
our personalities gives us depth and access to a greater range of
expression. Oftentimes the shadow will hold hitherto unknown powers
and capabilities. (Von Franz, Individuation 170-171)

For
instance, Beth was the force of responsibility, caring for the entire
city and managing the clone conspiracy besides. Sarah, the poster
child for neglecting responsibility, can learn much by walking in her
shoes. Felix calls to warn her Vic wants his coke back and won’t
stop, but Sarah insists Felix keep stalling him, as she fails to own
her mistakes. She goes further and fakes her death as Sarah, while
studying to become Beth – her accent, mannerisms, habits. In a
montage to “Bad Girls” by M.I.A, she watches numerous videos of
Beth flirting with her boyfriend, training for marathons. She
practices her lookalike’s signature and dyes her hair to match.
Playing at Beth melds into becoming Beth – as parts of Beth Childs’
life surface, Sarah gains a deep sense of respect for this woman so
like and unlike herself, even as she must solve Beth’s problems as
well as her own.

Using
her go-to moves as Sarah, she scams the bank manager into helping
clear out Beth’s account and starts ducking Beth’s
responsibilities, not just her own. Her partner Art texts, “Have
arrived. Must see you. Where are you? Still waiting.”

“Yeah,
good luck with that,” she mutters, tossing the phone aside.
However, he tracks her down in a cop car and hauls her away,
unwilling to be put on hold forever. As it turns out, there’s an
inquiry waiting about Beth’s shooting a civilian, Maggie Chen.
Sarah postpones the inquiry by vomiting and then by begging her
psychiatrist for leave, but it won’t wait forever. Her psychiatrist
tells her, “Getting back on the job for you is about moving forward
from a moment you can never take back.” While Sarah didn’t
actually shoot the civilian, she needs to reclaim her family life
after abandoning them. However, she ignores the advice.

After,
Sarah gets 12 unread texts for Beth. “Where
are you? What happened? Back at hotel, call. Still waiting.” Once
more, she tries ignoring them all.

In
Beth’s flat with Felix, she feels a closeness to her dead twin.
Felix recalls Beth’s shooting. “So, your twin, all hopped up on
cop tranquillizers, guns down an innocent Chinese lady holding a cell
phone in her hand. Is that true?”

Sarah
adds that she doubts the story. “Feels like she’s lying about
something.” Clearly, it takes a grifter to know a grifter.

Meanwhile,
Felix is stuck on Beth’s identical likeness to Sarah. “You’re
related! This could be your story!” The phrasing emphasizes how
Sarah is stuck in Beth’s pattern and must struggle a great deal to
break free. This foreshadows much for the coming season.“Every
foster kid dreams of their lost family,” Felix reminds her. “Deep
down, we all think we’re special.”

Sarah
retorts, “Yeah, the last thing I am is special.” Of course, with
her biology, she actually is. This conversation is central to the
heroine’s journey, emphasizing her destiny.

Meanwhile,
Beth’s relationship with Paul Dierden was more problematic than it
appeared to outsiders, as Sarah discovers. In fact, sterility can
symbolize an undeveloped or immature relationship. “For it is when
women and men in relationship, and feminine and masculine in the
individual psyche, can bless each other and affirm each other that
they effect the cross-fertilization necessary for a viral creativity
and a fruitful culture,” explains Gertrud Mueller Nelson in Here
All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine (193). To
avoid a conversation, Sarah aggressively seduces Paul when he returns
unexpectedly. After, she must deal with her feelings over sleeping
with her dead twin’s boyfriend.

Like
Art, the clone Katja refuses to let Sarah avoid her and she dives
into her backseat. There, she demands Sarah accept the briefcase of
medical samples and take her to her scientist friend. “You are
police, Beth. We need you,” Katja insists. Sarah refuses this
terrifying summons from this copy of herself – the first she’s
spoken with. Clearly, the moment is terrifying her, the moreso as
Katja is coughing blood. Ironically, her name, likely short for
Katherine, means pure, though she’s dying from damaged lungs.

Katja
gives Sarah a threshold test, meant to challenge the hero from
crossing over from the ordinary world to the magical one, with “Just
one. I’m a few. No family too. Who am I?” a riddle Sarah fails.Gazing
at her with the penetrating insight of the shadow,
Katja realizes (unlike Art
or Paul) that Sarah isn’t
who she pretends to be. Before Sarah can deny this, a gunshot slams
through the windshield and into Katja’s
head. Horror-struck, Sarah speeds away. Once again, running won’t
save her. When Katja’s
pink phone and her own
identical one ring, she finally answers. With this, she’s literally
answering adventure’s call as the first episode ends.

Episode
two begins with the phone call: “Did you meet the German?” the
other woman asks. “I can’t get a hold of her.”

Sarah
collapses against the hood of the car and tells her, “The German’s
dead. Someone shot her right in front of me.” The other woman
instructs Sarah to collect samples and then hide the body, talking
her through the instructions like a guardian angel. Thus the phone
voice is Sarah’s new mentor. This teacher offers insights the hero
can’t yet find without help, but generally guides from afar, as in
this scene, rather than holding the hero’s hand through the quest.
Meanwhile, Sarah confuses Alison (whose birth certificate she finds)
with Cosima, the voice on the phone, until they meet at the end of
episode two. This stresses their fluid, shifting identities as each
can become the other.

As
Sarah faces the second corpse of herself, this one grislier and
closer, the universe seems to be shouting at her to end her reckless
choices and find a better life path. Katja is a herald summoning
Sarah to the conflict of Clone Club. Maslany explains that Katja
“kinda comes in to serve her purpose, to pull her into the clone
world. And now she can’t get out of it. ‘cause now the killer
knows where she is” (“Send in the Clones”).

Sarah
ignores the warning, telling Felix her plans: She’s gotten the 75K,
“enough to lose Vic, lose the twin sister weirdness, just get
someplace safe with my daughter.” However, Detective Bell is
holding her cash hostage.

In
this episode, after Cosima orders her to get Katja’s briefcase,
Sarah begins her second impersonation. A German cover of “These
Boots Are Made for Walking” plays as Sarah/Katja saunters into the
posh Carlsborough Hotel. She sports Felix’s flashy clothes and a
German accent, but also finds herself trying out a new personality –
she’s still seeking someone better to become.

As
she discovers, Katja (or someone) has wrecked the place and has a
fully-stocked credit card to cover the damage. Sarah the screwup must
envy this heedless life. On the other hand, the fact that the woman’s
room was trashed and she ended up dead is another warning sign for
Sarah to straighten up.

The
brutal shooter from the first episode has left traces, with a
decapitated magenta-haired Barbie doll to match Katja, and the word
TRUTH scrawled in blood red across the page of an open Bible.
Ironically, Sarah, like the shooter, is pursuing a path of lies,
linking them.

In
the briefcase, she finds more sisters – from Austria, Italy, and
France. Hair designer Sandy Sokolowski says of the dead
Euro-clones that they were in a big rush so the clones “weren’t
as polished – we did think them through, but they were never going
to be characters that would be onscreen” (Berstein 85). Unlike some
of the clones, all these share the Beth/Sarah coloring, with just
different hairstyles. They even have similar neutral expressions.
Thus looking at them for Sarah really suggests looking at herself.
When only one side of the personality is nurtured, the heroine’s
“secret longing also to develop the other side within her still
remains, and very often a kind of unsatisfied restlessness and
depression overcome her” (Von Franz, The Feminine in Fairy Tales
94). Once more, they summon Sarah to the quest….and once more,
all have been brutally murdered.

Armed
with the still-living Alison Hendrix’s address in Scarborough,
Sarah goes to meet the closest copy. Ironically, Alison the perfect
soccer mom rejects her, quite violently. When Sarah admits
that Beth has killed herself, Alison idly picks up the enormous knife
she was using to cut the oranges and slashes at her. In a tight,
over-calm voice, Alison denies that this is possible. As she
dismisses Sarah, she demands that she scrunch down in her dark hoodie
and hide her “ugly face.”

When
Sarah returns and insists on answers, Alison gets in Sarah’s face.
“Fine, she wants in?! We’re clones! We’re someone’s
experiment and they’re killing us off!” (“Variation
Under Nature,” 103). As Sarah is
alerted to the show’s central conflict – people targeting her and
those like her, she’s crossed over into a science fiction world –
one of cloning and hidden corporations. At the same time, she meets
living, healthy copies of herself – not just Alison but also the
visiting Cosima Niehaus.

Alison’s
in white, Sarah in black,
and Cosima in red,
polarizing them all. As Jung adds, “Once one has experienced
a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites,
one begins to understand what is meant by the self” (CW 10,
872). Siblings in real life tend to polarize, half-consciously
dividing attributes like “I’m the bright one and she’s the
pretty one” (Downing, “Sisters and Brothers” 111). These
siblings are no exception – encouraging growth through their
differences.

Within
moments, Alison and Sarah discover how different they are. When
Felix crashes into her yard,
Alison pulls a gun on him.
At this, a threat to her family,
Sarah turns Mama Bear. She stands between them and sweetly
coaxes Alison to lower the gun.However, when she does, Sarah
smacks her across the face. Alison bursts into tears. “You point a
gun at my brother again, I will kick the living shite out of you!”
she shouts. Co-creator JohnFawcett says, “The other fun
thing about Alison is that she’s so completely opposite Sarah,”
calling them “street urchin” versus “white picket fence”
(“Send in the Clones”).

“Yeah,
I was there, thank you!” (“Variation Under Nature,”
103).His calling them “Sarah” sets up an
identity crisis for the heroine with more shadow selves – these
copies Felix finds prettier are once again the possibilities she
never seized for herself. Co-creator Graeme Manson explains, “Every
time you meet a clone, you create another identity crisis” (“Send
in the Clones”). Back at the townhouse, Sarah puts on Beth’s
lipstick and stops, starring at the reflection that’s becoming more
“Beth” by the minute. “Am I going insane?” she wonders
(“Variation Under Nature,” 103).

After
Alison tells her that she provided the 75K, Felix is skeptical: “So
what are you gonna do now? You gonna rip off your new sis and abscond
with Kira?”

Sarah
replies: “She’s not my sister. And…yeah.” Flight is still her
goal.

Meeting
Cosima in a bar, Sarah is weirded out by her “twin” in the
mirror. “Hey. Don’t worry, you get used to it,” Cosima insists,
but Sarah is unconvinced. She’s still struggling with who these
revelations make her, and how she’s different from the others. As
they sit together, Cosima finally gives her the Clone Club origin
story. Six months prior, Katja contacted Beth with a crazy story of
her “genetic identicals” being hunted across Europe. Beth tracked
down Cosima and Alison. Cosima adds, “Yes, but, who is the
original? Who created us? Who’s killing us?” These excellent
questions set up much of the story as the pair play cop together.
Cosima adds that they lost their cop, “so, however you managed to
get into her [Beth’s] shoes, we need you to stay there.”

Sarah
protests that she can’t really be a cop. Besides, “Being Beth is
what got me into this mess in the first place.”

Cosima
tells her, “But you can’t run away from her.” If Beth
represents growing up, taking responsibility, fulfilling obligations
to the city and to the clones, the line gains much more nuance.
Smiling at Sarah’s awkward jokes as she leaves, Cosima advises
Sarah to hold on to her sense of humor. “Beth couldn’t,” she
reminds them both soberly. Beth remains a cautionary tale for them
all, the ever-looming reminder that someone with the same genes, the
same face, stuck in the same conspiracy, ended it all.

At
work, Sarah is summoned to investigate a murder…actually that of
Katja’s. Meanwhile the shooter calls the department on the speaker
phone, with a processed voice over a Slavic accent. Sarah/Beth
listens with horror as the killer twists the clones’ code: “She
was just one of a few. Unfit for family. Now she’s horse glue.”The killer tells Art that “Jane Doe” (Katja) expired at
Allenside Park and hangs up.

Continuing
to solve her own body-hiding, Sarah joins Art in tracking the killer
to her flat. There, Sarah discovers a Bible containing a copy of
Katja’s passport. She pockets it, but is creeped out to find a dead
copy of herself staring out of the book. Sarah reads from the page,
the Book of Psalms. “For you formed my inward parts. You knit me
together in…” Art picks up the recitation from what he’s
discovered on the wall. “…my mother’s womb. I praise you for I
am fearfully and wonderfully made,” he finishes. All this,
according to Art, suggests deep spiritual problems, though it’s
also a reference to cloning.

He of
course functions as a helper and support system in Sarah’s many
quests. Arthur Bell and fellow cop Angela DeAngelis (angel of
angels) have heroic names, casting them as the “good guys” in
this struggle of ideologies. Ironically, by standing for the law,
they may be the only characters not aligned with one of the shadowy
groups battling each other. In season one, Sarah as Beth keeps
secrets from both. The next year, Art is a reluctant ally, taking on
her secrets, while Angela spies on the respectable clone, Alison,
eager for dirt.

Sarah
sees movement outside the window and shoves Art out of the way before
he can get shot. Since she’s protecting him from a clone of
herself, there’s a suggestion she and the shooter are already
atuned. She races after the figure, but she, hidden beneath a cloak,
knocks her over the head and menaces her with a fish-handled knife.
Sarah’s only defense is to yell “I’m not Beth!” As she
reveals her true self, the shooter yanks back her own hood, showing
her her own face again, though with blonde curls. Sarah stabs her
with a piece of rebar, and she flees.

“The
Madwoman rises up inside us when we are oppressed by rigid order and
control” (Leonard 16). Struggling with all she is to fit into
Beth’s life, part of Sarah metaphorically rebels and takes her in
the complete opposite direction, evoking her rage and disregard for
society’s rules. This pushes her back to her center.

After
this confrontation with the mad, raging, murdering side of herself, a
new darker shadow, Sarah is steeled to accept responsibility. Her
daughter Kira, the beacon in her life, remains a goal for Sarah. Her
smiles and laughter suggest the innocence Sarah has lost in herself
and wants to reclaim. Her empathy also suggests another symbolic goal
for Sarah – finding commonality. “With consciousness, you make
the effort to understand exactly how other persons see things – how
they think, what they feel, what makes them anxious and why this is
so” (Nelson 96).

“If
the Self appears as a young person in a woman’s unconscious
productions, it means the newly and consciously discovered Self”
(Von Franz, Feminine 170). In fact, children represent one’s
potential as well as one’s innocence, “a higher transmutation of
the individuality, the self transmuted and reborn into perfection”
(Cooper 35).

Kira’s
drawings, mostly smiling women, flowers, and suns, suggest an
optimistic outlook. Combining this with her startling prophecies
suggests everything really will turn out all right. Her name might
come from the Hindi and Sanskrit for “beam of light” or the Irish
Gaelic “dusky or dark-haired” – all true. Sarah spies on Kira
with Felix but finally concedes, “Bloody Mrs. S. She’s right.
What kind of mother am I if I snatch my own daughter?” With this,
she joins the fight. She will not escape with money and daughter but
will win back her life piece by piece.

Meanwhile,
Kira’s drawing of her mother in episode four has a jagged, dripping
red mouth. While the drawing appears kindly meant, it’s a violent
image that echoes the lies Sarah has been telling and the violence
Kira will soon experience. There’s also a suggestion that Kira
senses her mother’s power to destroy and devour, emphasizing that
Sarah must learn the cruel savage side of motherhood before the story
ends.

Though
Sarah tries to avoid it, she’s told to question the boy who saw the
shooter. Trevor describes her as an “angry angel,” and, when
asked what she looked like, he points at Sarah. Sarah, the
rule-breaking delinquent and now the well-behaved cop, has never been
a good angel or a truly evil one. This moment introduces another
shadow, one she will find herself facing within herself and
exploring.

Back
at her office, when Sarah answers the phone
“Detective Childs,” she’s startled to hear the accented
retort: “No, you’re not.” Once again, her opposite self shuts
down her constructed identity. Later the new clone even calls her “a
terrible detective” (“Effects of External Conditions,”104). The Shadow “shears us of our
defenses and entails a sacrifice of easy collective understandings
and of the hopes and expectations of looking good and safely
belonging. It is crude, chaotic, surprising” (Perera 33).

The
shooter identifies herself at last, giving Sarah a new tension with
“Helena.” Helena also confuses them, telling Sarah, “You’re
doing police work but how long can that last? When the real police
find me you are me and I’m you. We’re both the victim and the
cop” (“Effects of External Conditions,”104). Helena even begins the episode
repeating “I’m not Beth” – presumably to copy her nuances,
but this gives her yet another identity, Beth’s, to try on and
reject. Soon, Helena infiltrates the police station as Sarah to plant
a confession of murdering Maggie Chen. While this is leverage, it’s
also Sarah’s worry – that Beth turned evil and unstable. The cops
call the murder victim “Jane Doe” and the murderer “Jane
Death,” paralleling them in episode four even before they discover
their identical features.

Helena,
disguised clumsily as Sarah-as-Beth, for three layers of complexity,
slips into the police department while Sarah is out. Symbolically,
it’s like having Sarah-on-a-bad-day come into work instead of
normal Sarah (as Sarah’s intern friend observes). Helena,
representing Sarah’s dark side unleashed, devours the muffin on her
desk like a wild animal and studies the murder board – emphasizing
Sarah’s status as criminal since she’s the actual murderer.

Helena
considers the framed snapshot of Beth and Paul – like Sarah, she
envies this love she’s never had. However, this needy voice from
within Sarah is loving and encouraging connection where Sarah rejects
it – Helena picks up Paul’s call and actually asks him for help.
“I got beat up. Please come get me outta here.” When he comes,
however, the real Sarah rejects him and says she doesn’t need him.
Here, Helena enacts Sarah’s buried impulses: all she wishes she
could say, Helena says.

That
night men in white coveralls slip into Beth’s bedroom in a complete
intrusion into her personal space. Worse, they hook her up to
machines and insert an electrode, on which she chokes. Sarah is
experimented on in her sleep, resembling the medical tests Helena is
undergoing in juxtaposed scenes. Film of fragmented body parts
conflates the two women, making it even less clear who is who. When
she wakes, Sarah rushes into the bathroom and coughs up one of the
electrodes she choked on. Clearly it wasn’t a dream. The electrode
in her mouth and puncture mark in her arm are both penetrations of
her soft, malleable body at its most vulnerable, and thus terribly
disturbing. After, Cosima reports that it’s an EGG – that the
mystery men were monitoring their subject.

One
might notice Beth and Sarah’s different paths – Beth commits
suicide after facing enemies on all front – DYAD and the Monitors,
murderous Helena, a deadly clone illness, and Paul’s spying. In the
comic, she adds in a video diary, “How can I trust him? How am I
supposed to trust anyone ever again?” (The Clone Club#1:
Sarah). Sarah, faced with the same information, doesn’t despair
but confronts Paul and finally gains his love and trust. She trusts
Art and finally tells him all her secrets, discovering he’s
completely reliable and unwavering. Further, she makes the clones
into a true sisterhood and fighting force. Alison says of Beth,
“Truth is, I barely knew Beth. She was all business, but I admired
her. She didn’t pry. She was discreet. She didn’t bring her
foster brother to my house” (“Variation Under Nature,” 103).
However, Sarah drags her entire messy life, from Felix to Vic, over
to Alison and makes her deal with them. Further, she insists Alison
get involved, whereas Beth let her contribute money and stay hidden
in suburbia. While Sarah’s strategy is more annoying, it eventually
makes them all sisters in truth. Arguably Sarah is stronger than
Beth, or her tougher background has given her the tools to cope.

The
female hero is neither the traditional helpmate rescuer, who “saves”
others by immolating herself, nor is she like the male superhero seen
in such works as Frank Herbert’s Dune and Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land, who leads while others only
follow. She saves by teaching others that they have the power to be
heroic. They do not become her followers, but are coequals in a
community of heroes” (Pearson and Pope 263).

The
Sarah/Beth situation continues to get tangled with her two other
clones – one the murder victim she hid, the other the murderer. In
“Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner” (107), Art discovers dead
Katja’s DNA matches Helena’s.

As
Sarah prepares to climb into Paul’s Range Rover, Helena’s
reflection superimposes next to hers in the window. Not only is she
startled, but she’s struck by their twinishness once more. “Shit!”
Sarah exclaims.

Helena
raises her hands and promises a truce. “I have an offer for you.
But we must talk. And eat. Let’s have lunch” (“Parts Developed
in an Unusual Manner,” 107). Such a straightforward offer from the
murderer Sarah’s been tracking and evading is jarring. However, the
quest is one of learning to live with one’s shadow, learn from it
instead of endlessly battling. Sarah accepts.

Helena
devours food at the diner, and also tells Sarah of the connection she
senses: “I dreamed we were friends,” she tells Sarah who retorts
that they are not friends. Helena studies her spoon as she
shrugs. “We will be. I’ve seen it.” Though Sarah rejects
connection, Helena embraces it. Helena, the dark savage killer, is
also the feminine side Sarah has mostly rejected in herself, as the
“punk” who never visits her mother or daughter. Helena is a
killer of innocent women, but she has much to teach her new sister.

Just
as the heroine represents life-giving and creative power, the witch
figure murders and destroys the new life. Worse yet, she seeks to
cast her own shadow over the heroine, blaming her for the destructive
deed. And yet, this forces the heroine to face her ordeal: to descend
into death but also to acknowledge the child-killing, death-dealing
rage within her virginal heart. (Frankel, From Girl to Goddess
273)

The
villain on the heroine’s journey is the killer of the innocent,
what Helena calls “sheep.” It’s the life-giving heroine who
quests to protect them all and disarm the force of evil. Helena
requests her knife back and each reminds the other she nearly killed
her. Helena ends their standoff by writing down her number and
demanding a name or she’ll kill Sarah. By doing so, she throws
Sarah into conflict, forcing the other woman to choose between
protecting her new friends and herself.

After
their lunch, Helena breaks into Sarah’s empty condo. The imagery
suggests she’s Sarah’s dark side, only allowed out at night.
Echoing Sarah in the season premier, she eyes a photo of Paul in the
kitchen and prowls through the house. “As a personal shadow figure,
the Bag Lady symbolizes the freewheeling female survivor and
bountiful female nurturer…the rejected side of the feminine that is
characterized as offbeat, peculiar, crazy, or mad, and that has been
scorned by our white, patriarchal society” (Leonard 171). Helena
offers exactly this kind of insight and strength.

When
Paul is kidnapped, Sarah calls in Helena for help, giving her
Olivier’s name – one of the exploitative spies, not the innocent
clones. Astrid, Olivier’s assistant, puts a hood over Sarah’s
head, zips cuffs her hands, and leads her down the basement corridor.

Helena
comes, knocks out the assistant, and lovingly caresses Sarah,
requesting her name. Since Sarah is still hooded, she might be any of
the clones in this moment, and she’s just been masquerading as
Beth and mistaken for the killer. She chokes Sarah next, as Sarah
watches Helena as a blur through the hood. In fact, all the lines
between clones are blurring, even as, in this moment, Helena comes to
save her sister, her first act on the side of goodness. Visually,
she’s switched over her allegiance, even if she’s still teetering
between choices.

When
Olivier sees Astrid has been knocked out, he goes down to where Sarah
is tied and yanks her hood off. However, Helena has snuck in to take
Sarah’s place as tied-up hostage. Instead of a sheep as Olivier
plans, he discovers a wolf awaiting him. This dark vicious side of
Sarah, suddenly invoked to take her place, indeed turns savage,
snatching back the fish knife he’s taken. Still acting as Sarah’s
other half, Helena takes Olivier’s offer that he made Sarah to “see
his tail” and brutally slices the artificial augmentation off in a
“message for your master” (“Parts Developed in an Unusual
Manner,” 107). By phrasing it this way, she treats him as the
object, reversing their roles. It’s also a castration moment as she
slices off his wiggling appendage. Helena ends the episode joyously
dancing in the club, knife in her hand. She apparently tells Olivier
she was the one to kill Beth and take over her identity, protecting
her weaker side, Sarah, who goes into hiding with Paul.

Soon
enough, Helena calls her for help. Sarah comes, but as she faces this
reflection of herself, trapped in a brutal cage, she still fears and
distrusts this savage side of herself. She raises a shaking gun.
Helena, meanwhile, drops her head so the barrel presses against her
forehead. “Do it,” she says flatly. If her light side rejects
her, she truly has no one. Sarah can’t do it and frees her, even
while denying she cares. Though Sarah keeps the gun on her, Helena
embraces her and cries “I love you.” This vulnerable, wounded
shadow holds her tight, insisting on being part of her life.
Symbolically, Sarah has already reclaimed her family: Felix and Paul
as well as S. and Kira. With them comes this last piece of wholeness,
the tortured, abandoned dark side.

“By
choosing to confront the Madwoman and the source of her strength, the
situations or frustrations out of which she emerges, and by choosing
to acknowledge, work with, and transform them, we learn to recognize
and honor the Madwoman’s dark feminine energies as part of a
greater whole” (Leonard 283). Acknowledging her as a sister, a
gradual process for Sarah, means acknowledging the dark side within
herself. This is a vital step in individuation. “Whether the
shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon ourselves…the
shadow is not necessarily always an opponent. In fact, he is exactly
like any human being with whom one has to get along, sometimes by
giving in. Sometimes by resisting, sometimes by giving love –
whatever the situation requires” (Von Franz, “Individuation.”
182).

Back
at the precinct, Sarah is having identity confusion with the murderer
and victim they’re investigating, as much as she is with Beth. In
“Entangled Bank,” (108), Art decides dead Katja (based on her
fingerprints) was Sarah Manning, who to his shock looks like Beth.
Sarah, however, was reported dead by Beth’s train crash. As Art and
Angie debate about twins or triplets separated at birth (considering
how much Beth resembles Sarah they actually have it about right),
they keep digging. They confront Sarah-as-Beth with Sarah’s photo
and ask if she’s seen her before. “Yeah, in the mirror,” Sarah
as Beth snarks, having fun by telling the precise truth. However, Art
rewatches the photo of Beth’s suicide and figures it out. In
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” (110), he confronts Sarah.

After
a season of hiding, she is finally vulnerable, stripped of her hidden
identity. She resumes her real accent at last, and, done with lies,
only insists in what Felix might call her “truth voice,” that she
didn’t kill Beth. “No, you watched her commit suicide and then
you went straight for her wallet,” Art retorts, making her take
responsibility for her real actions at last. Further, Katja’s face
has surfaced, and Art makes her face this too. Confronted with all
these selves she tried to bury – the grifter, the dying woman
reaching out to her sisters, the killer, Sarah must reclaim them one
by one. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Sarah tells him with
conviction. He invites her to try him.

Resuming
their talk after an interruption, Art takes the seat across from
Sarah. “Sarah, my partner killed herself, and I didn’t see it
coming. Help me. Help Beth. I know you care.” With this appeal to
help Beth, the weaker sister who killed herself, whom Sarah is coming
to love, Sarah finally cracks. She confesses there’s a reason they
all look the same and begins to cry. However, before she can confess,
Neolution intervenes.

Shapeshifter-Lover

On
the heroine’s journey, the men around her echo her undeveloped
masculine side. This Animus, as Jung called him, “evokes masculine
traits within her: logic, rationality, intellect. Her conscious side,
aware of the world around her, grows, and she can rule and comprehend
the exterior world” (Frankel, From Girl to Goddess 22). The
Animus is the mediator between the ego and the deeper, complete self.
The most primitive Animus is a force of brute strength and power. As
the heroine grows, her Animus matures, or is replaced by a series of
cleverer figures when she’s ready for more developed stages:
initiative and planning, rule of law, and wisdom.

Jungian
analyst Marie Louise Von Franz’s model works in Sarah’s story
too.Sarah’s first
relationship mentioned onscreen is with Vic
the Dick, a petty drug
dealer she hit and stole cocaine
from. The most primitive
animus offers “mere
physical power – for instance, an athletic champion or ‘muscle
man’” (Von Franz, “Individuation.” 206). He
pursues Sarah through season one, with intimidation and bullying
apparently his only tools. In the comic Orphan Black:
Deviations, Sarah calls him “a violent, whiny man-child
struggling with ADHD” as she insists on his lack of planning
ability (#3).

She
replaces him with Paul, suggesting that she’s leaving the drug
dealer for a healthier relationship – a successful man who can
commit. In their relationship, however, she quickly discovers Paul
has let people come in an experiment on her in the dead of night.

Sarah
starts investigating and gets spy equipment, only to find out her
tougher, more cynical sister Beth already did so. Channeling Beth’s
toughness, Sarah revolves to find out the truth. Thus Paul is a
master of planning and scheming, so to defeat him, she develops the
same qualities in herself. His name is also Biblical – there, Paul
was the greatest enemy of Christians, soon converted to their
greatest disciple. As Paul joins the Clone Club and sacrifices
himself for Sarah, the hero, he echoes this pattern.

Paul
confronts her in “Conditions of Existence” (105). “I knew,”
he says. “I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew. It was that
day you were supposed to be at the hearing. First time we’d had
sex in months.” There’s the Clash t-shirt, the disappearing scar,
and finally, pictures he’s taken of Sarah with Kira. “This little
girl? I was there when Beth found out she couldn’t have kids.”
Apparently, this is another aspect of life Beth ran from, which
Sarah-as-Beth is finally reclaiming. Paul adds that he worries Sarah
killed Beth.

Sarah
turns the tables, revealing she knows his secrets are just as big.
“You observe her,” Sarah continues. “You let people into her
home. Like last night. Doctors came and medically examined her in her
sleep. And she knew. You’re a plant.” She flings Beth’s letters
at him, voice rising. “And she killed herself because the man she
loved turned her whole life into a lie. She knew you didn’t love
her and she couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t leave. And now
she figured it out.” When Sarah whispers, “She trusted you,”
and “How could you do that to her?” she clearly doesn’t mean
Beth but herself. Channeling and defending her weaker sister, Sarah
finds herself perfectly in her shoes.

Paul’s
two-faced behavior evokes another quality traditional for the lover
on the heroine’s journey – the shapeshifter, straight out of
fairytales.

In
the game of love, the hero and heroine each view their partner as a
shapeshifter. This “other half” they must cleave to like
themselves has frightening mood swings and unpredictable desires.
Hence, many tales appear about enticing swan maidens from the sea or
taming beastly monsters into Prince Charmings. (Frankel, From Girl
to Goddess 76)

She
has believed him a prince, but here he’s more like a Bluebeard.
This too is a common pattern for the heroine, trapped in the home
with a monster she must outwit. “The predator exists in
everyone—the force that longs to devour the world, the insatiable
greed that will take the entire psyche for itself. The demon lover,
or killer animus, lures his victim out of life. He seduces her,
shrouding her in lies, trying to convince her she’s helpless”
(Frankel, From Girl to Goddess 80). He may succeed in this,
unless she has the courage to bring his predator nature into her
consciousness, coming to understand and accept it.

The
Bluebeard tale is a challenge for the psyche. Will the girl come to
realize that her lover is a murderer before it is too late? If she
does, she survives, and learns not to be fooled by charming manners
masking a murderous heart. If her hidden instincts don’t emerge in
time, if she cannot use the one key of perception to open the door
blocking her knowledge of who Bluebeard truly is, her body will end
up dismembered in his trophy room. (Frankel, From Girl to Goddess
82)

As
she struggles through these psychological barriers, Paul’s lies are
a devastation for her. In a similar piece of symbolism, Paul is
spying for the enemy, but is also falling for Sarah and truly does
want to help her. His plan that they run away to Rio reflects her own
escape fantasies, showing how they’re not so different. In episode
six, Sarah and Paul finally speak honestly:

PAUL:
My problems didn’t start in the military. They started out of
uniform, as a private contractor. Understand? I’m not doing any of
this by choice.

SARAH:
All right. So, they forced you to be Beth’s monitor for two years
without even knowing why.

PAUL:
Are you some kind of hustler? You understand leverage, right? The
difference is you chose to infiltrate Beth’s life, to screw her
boyfriend right on this counter.

SARAH:
And you weren’t even you.

PAUL:
And you aren’t you either.

They
thus find more commonality. Here each must accept the other is not
the perfect prince or princess but a flawed human being. By the look
on her face, Sarah doesn’t appreciate being called out on her
grifting, something that only Fee usually does

With
this understanding, however, they can proceed more honestly. “Changed
by this encounter, the heroine realizes that her male “protector”
is not an omnipotent god worthy of her blind devotion. He can be her
equal, but he no longer commands her every thought or desire. Thus
she understands she need not rely on her father, or men at all, to
rescue and protect her (Frankel, From Girl to Goddess 80).

Sarah
discovers Paul doesn’t know about the clones and tells Cosima, who
replies, “See, it’s a double blind. Um, the monitors are unaware
of the purpose of the experiment. That way they can’t skew the
results” (“Variations Under Domestication,” 106). This reveals
Paul as more of a pawn than a mastermind here. At episode end she
tells him about the clones, wanting to be honest about her life and
trust someone, even as Alison and Cosima are retreating from their
own romantic partners. They echo her fears even as she ignores their
cautions and throws herself into closeness.

As
his handler Olivier
interrogates him, Paul
answers defensively, much as Sarah might, as their relationship is
picked apart. He tells her after that Olivier instructed him just to
watch “Beth” closely,
“protect her; make sure she’s not aware.” Sarah paces. “Aware
of what?” Paul stands and speaks through a clenched jaw. “Of me.
Of us. This is high-level shit, Sarah. An illegal human-cloning
trial. Aren’t you the least bit worried that someone might be
trying to kill you?” Sarah admits she is, “but at least it’s
not you.” He voices the fears she’s not dealing with and helps
her solve them, in the traditional animus
helper role.

In
turn, Paul picks up more of
Sarah’s sneakiness as he plays Oliver for information about the
killer of clones, who he knows is a clone too. Olivier,
however, insists he bring Beth
in, and as the helper voice from within, Paul warns her of the
danger: “They know you’re not Beth. Run!”

Olivier
captures him and knocks him out. This leaves Paul the damsel in
Sarah’s story, helpless and unconscious as he awaits rescue. “It’s
probably my fault he’s in there in the first place,” she tells
Felix, and drags him off to save him. Of course, Felix is another
animus, helping with her crazy plans even as he tries to talk her out
of them. Co-creator Graeme Manson explains, “He’s totally
irreverent, he’s super bitchy, sometimes he’s her biggest
problem. And yet, at the end of the day, he’s got her back, no
matter what” (“Insiders: Felix”).